Genres – Personality

Two different personality scales were used. The Big-5 scale has 5 factors, while the MBTI has 4 factors. An individual can score high or low on all 9 scales. It is more concise and more clear to list the factors and the correlating traits as I have done below than to describe the correlations with words, mainly because each correlation can be phrased in 2 different ways and a description would need to be unnecessarily long and complicated. The descriptions of the personality scales have been collated on another page for easier reference.

The Big-5 factors are listed with a +/- sign, while the MBTI factors do not. Notice that both scales have an extraversion factor. My advice would be to go over the scales before continuing, and get a basic idea of what each scale means so you don’t have to flip back and forth.

Here is an example of how to decipher the following chart. We see that the FPS factor correlates positively with Extraversion. This means that people who like the FPS genre tend to score high on the Extraversion scale. They tend to be active, full of energy, and appear more assertive. This positive correlation also means that people who don’t like FPS games tend to score low on the Extraversion scale. They tend to appear reserved, quiet and appear more passive. Remember as you read this following chart that a positive correlation also tells you what it means for someone to dislike a particular genre. For that reading, you need to read the other end of the personality scale. Thus, for this example, we read the +Extraversion to find out what it means for someone to like the FPS genre, and the –Extraversion for people who dislike the FPS genre. Perhaps now you see why I chose to list the findings in a chart form instead of writing it all out.

Personality Correlates of Gaming Factors

Factor	Personality Correlates
FPS	+ Extraversion (.21) + Agreeableness (.16) Extraversion (-.23)
TBS	+ Openness (.18) Intuitive (.20)
ADV/RPG	+ Conscientious (.19) + Extraversion (.15) + Agreeableness (.14) + Openness (.28) Intuitive (.16)
MM	- Conscientious (-.18) - Openness (-.17) - Agreeableness (-.13)
Logic	+ Agreeable (.29) + Conscientious (.17) + Openness (.29)
War	+ Conscientious (.20) + Agreeable (.22) + Extraversion (.18) + Openness (.19) - Neurotic (-.17)

We begin to see the complexity of gaming. There is no such thing as one gamer personality. Instead, we see that different personalities find different kinds of games appealing. But this is still only a shard of the entire story.